<p>A smartphone app used by two volunteers for one year to track their daily life has thrown interesting results about the composition of gut bacteria and its close relationship with health.<br /><br /></p>.<p>These participants used smartphone apps to collect information every day for a year in the study by scientists from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard University.<br /><br />They logged their daily activity, including diet, exercise, bowel movements and mood and submit regular stool and saliva samples.<br /><br />The samples were analysed in detail to see what had the greatest effect on the composition of the microbiota.<br /><br />The results showed that the participants had a "default" microbiota which were unaffected by sleep levels, exercise and mood.<br /><br />What did have a significant effect on the microbiota were two life events - one subject moved abroad while the other had a significant bout of food poisoning which caused most pre-existing gut bacterial species to decline.<br /><br />"Life events such as visiting another country or contracting a disease cause a significant shift in the make-up of the gut microbiota - the community of bacteria living in the digestive system," researchers explained.<br /><br />The authors think the method could be rolled out to studies of human-bacteria relationships with many more participants.<br /><br />"This has given us a lot of new ideas for follow up studies and analyses of gut microbial ecology as well as infectious diseases in humans," professor Lawrence David from Duke University said.<br /><br />The study published in the open access journal Genome Biology.</p>
<p>A smartphone app used by two volunteers for one year to track their daily life has thrown interesting results about the composition of gut bacteria and its close relationship with health.<br /><br /></p>.<p>These participants used smartphone apps to collect information every day for a year in the study by scientists from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard University.<br /><br />They logged their daily activity, including diet, exercise, bowel movements and mood and submit regular stool and saliva samples.<br /><br />The samples were analysed in detail to see what had the greatest effect on the composition of the microbiota.<br /><br />The results showed that the participants had a "default" microbiota which were unaffected by sleep levels, exercise and mood.<br /><br />What did have a significant effect on the microbiota were two life events - one subject moved abroad while the other had a significant bout of food poisoning which caused most pre-existing gut bacterial species to decline.<br /><br />"Life events such as visiting another country or contracting a disease cause a significant shift in the make-up of the gut microbiota - the community of bacteria living in the digestive system," researchers explained.<br /><br />The authors think the method could be rolled out to studies of human-bacteria relationships with many more participants.<br /><br />"This has given us a lot of new ideas for follow up studies and analyses of gut microbial ecology as well as infectious diseases in humans," professor Lawrence David from Duke University said.<br /><br />The study published in the open access journal Genome Biology.</p>